The Travels of Jack van Ommen

March 18th, 2014

...now browsing by day

My cousin Carol (male) de Vries drove us to Friesland. I wanted to take a last look at the Polderdijk in de Lemmer where the Mastmaker’s daughter grew up. Carol is the last and 5th generation of the mastmakers. The home and mastmaker shop are declared a provincial historical heritage site. The owners of the B&B “Lemster Veerschip” and hotel “It Heechhhus” will restore the buildings in their original condition and then incorporate it in their B&B/hotel. They plan to start the restoration this September. Jan van der Neut, the third generation mastmakers of the family our grandfather sold the Polderdijk business to in 1928, still lives in one of the apartments above the shop, the same spot my mother grew up in. We talked to Jan briefly. Next we rang the bell of the tiny old bakery across from the Reformed church and the historical museum to say hello to Johannes de Vries, 82 years old. Who succeeded his father as the local historian. Johannes is not related to our de Vries side, even though he has the same last name, but he is related through his mother to Carol’s mother, Schirm. He knows our entire family history. His grandfather, Taeke Bijlsma worked for the father of the “other” Mastmaker’s Daughter, in Germany. Across the bridge, next to the 200 year existing Clothing store of Schirm lives Carol’s cousin Douwe Schirm. He is a sailor and very close to my age and his wife has the same addiction as I have for South East Asia. He owns the smallest Lemster aak ever built by the yard of de Boer in Lemmer in 1907, 8.7 meter, the LE-10 and a regular traditional fishing Lemster Aak the LE-6. Our last stop was in Sneek to see our cousin Siebold Hartkamp. He is just between me and Carol in years. My mother was Siebolds mothers oldest sister. Still with me? Siebold is the success story in our family, he knows everyone in Friesland and we were treated with great respect when he took us on a tour of the Frisian Maritmime Museum. I have been there a couple of times since 2009. They have enlarged and update the museum with more video areas, etc. I could spend a couple of days in it. There is a recent addition of a Roman origin skiff that was discovered deep below the peat when laying a gas transmission pipe. The estimated origin is the year 1180.